These are my father’s days. He recently took an early retirement option from his engineering career to start a second career in renewable energy. Now that’s renewable energy for you, packing up and starting over in your late fifties, just because you want to make a difference.

His brother, another father figure in my life, is about to do something similar – not changing industries so much as locations, moving his life and his wife and his perspective across the pond to Asia.

When I spoke to my grandmother, their mother, about this, she beamed approval and harked back to the days when she kept them connected to her on a string to prevent them from wandering off too far. Guess all that wandering is doing them some good now, she said, cherubic pink cheeks flushing with pride.

So there my dad is, afloat for the first time on his shiny new raft with the sun and a giant photovoltaic panel for guidance, and perhaps not much else. I know he can swim, so I’m not all that worried about him.

When I was applying for college, he always reminded me of a certain adage: The only thing constant in life is change itself. Then he added his part: So get used to it.